Opinions

Hub brand requirements are modest compared with retail systems. They communicate reputation and trust to a relatively small set of sophisticated firms they hope to serve.

The banking industry is evolving. Doesn’t it make more sense to focus on how to evolve with it rather than how to reduce competition?

When you look at the potent combination of Prime customers (who are the only ones eligible to shop on Prime Day) and Echo owners, Amazon was shrewd to give those customers extra special treatment.

Announcing that a formerly free product or service will now cost money exposes banks to reputational risk. But the process doesn’t have to end in customers getting angry.

The move will explore the risks and opportunities of the new technology, and the group membership allocation across agencies and stakeholder groups seems to be a reasonable way to include a range of opinions, writes Rob Viglione, co-founder of ZenCash.

Open APIs can bring speed and flexibility to P-to-P payments, e-commerce and financial services. But there's also identity and performance risks that banks need to address, writes Rahul Singh, president of financial services at HCL Technologies.

The number of channels consumers use to pay their bills is unlikely to decrease anytime soon, so billers that are able to check off every bill payment channel will enjoy a competitive advantage, writes Jim Lester, senior vice president of product management and strategy for biller solutions at Fiserv.

Before banks replace their core systems — which are largely homogeneous in the U.S. — they should work on ways to deliver convenient and engaging digital services for each of their channels.

Cards, e-wallets and transfers are all necessary for merchants to attract younger consumers to recurring payments, writes Artem Tymoshenko, CEO of MaxPay.

Advanced operating systems can run marketing and support services such as Apple Pay. Merchants would be well served to consider the diverse options of new terminals, writes Ben Wagner, director of solutions at Ingenico Group, North America.